#Shorts & #Reels Warning: addictive fun alert!

For those of you who follow me on social media (as @ZenaShapter), you may have noticed a few videos happening lately! It all started at a recent writing retreat, after I photographed some beautiful Australian flowers during my morning walk. I posted them online, then thought they might have made for better viewing as a short video clip. It was time to teach myself something new!

After all, every professional author runs a small business, and every small business needs to continually try new ways to present its core message and values to consumers.

The first video I created was an ‘Instagram reel’. After recording a few short vertical clips, then editing them on my phone, it was relatively easy to upload them to Instagram as a ‘reel’ and set the montage to music. I had a lot of fun selecting the music! However, I wasn’t always able to then download or share the result on other platforms without affecting the sound or format in some way. So I also started using iMovie, the desktop software program I’ve used before to create horizontal videos. It took a while to figure out how to edit my vertical videos, though I eventually figured that out (you have to create a project as a ‘New App Preview’), as well as how to upload my videos to YouTube as ‘shorts’. I can then email the result to my phone to share on social media from there.

My YouTube channel is over here if you’d like to subscribe, whether it’s to watch how I develop my film technique or just for fun. To view my creative ‘shorts’, just click on the heading ‘shorts’.

My brother is a successful film producer in England, so I suppose I could ask him for pointers about film technique and production – but then who wants their brother telling them what to do! He he. I’m sure he’ll tell me anyway of course.

The main difference between an ‘Instagram reel’ and ‘YouTube short’ is the ideal video length, being approximately 15-30 seconds or 60 seconds respectively. I try to keep my videos short either way – I know how busy we all are, and the less time we all spend online, the more time we can spend reading books!

Now I use a combination of Instagram and iMovie to create my videos, some of which I’ve included below – I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed making them! Make sure you turn on the sound! Which is your favourite, and why?